I can't stand legit RPGs, just not my cup of tea. But this game looks so amazing i'm actually finding myself wanting to buy it. But i learned my lesson many years ago when i bought KOTOR not knowing the horrors of RPGs, i was expecting an adventure game like the Jedi Outcast games. I ended up returning KOTOR within a few days, and learned the lesson that i don't like RPGs.

I do love action RPGs though, like oblivion. But games like these, where its press "a" to talk. press "b" to fire, seems so primitive and out of date. I can't figure out why, or how, people actually enjoy these types of games.

They didn't answer any question.
But that's not their fault, it's the reporter doing the interview for not asking on and just accepting it when they say they have no answer yet.

At first I was so excited about this game, but the more I read about it, the more sceptic I get.
Everytime a developer starts blabbing that his game will be the best ever, it falls down flat.
For some reason this interview reminded me a lot of "Daikatana" (if someone still remembers that).
Supposedly that was the best game ever, according to the developers. Untill it came out and it plain out sucked.
Normally this wouldn't happen with a Bioware game.
But also: normally Bioware people keep quiet about how awesome their new game is and let the players and reviewers figure that out for themselves.

KOTOR 1 (not 2) was amazing, and we can only hope this will be exactly like that, but they should really quit saying how great it is, before it gets overhyped and people will expect to much.

I think october will show us just how great Bioware really is, when Dragon Age: Origins comes out.
If that is really going to be the new RPG standard (which I truely hope it will be), then kudos to them, but if it fails they have a big portion of that to blame on their marketing and overhypingskills.

I for one didn't care for "Mass Effect" at all (their previous "best" RPG ever). A lot of review sites gave it the best score ever, but most players critisized it. Ofcourse: the story and setting were great but the number of random silly fetch quests and the downright 3rd person shooter controls made me not like it so much.
The decisions you made didn't have SUCH a big impact on future events as they did in lets say "The Witcher" (which is according to me the next standard in RPG gaming).

Back in the day with the Baldur's Gate series and Planescape Torment I thought Bioware was the absolute best. KOTOR 1 confirmed that.
But after that it went a bit downhill for me. I didn't like Jade Empire at all, and as I said before, I didn't care much for Mass Effect.

Therefor I'm placing all my bets on Dragon Age Origins for them to get back into my good book.
Although they have nothing to fear, because sites like IGN will love them anyway and will continue having pointless interviews like this one with them.

Don't get me wrong, Bioware is still awesome and they did/do a tremendous job. But they don't have to say that themselves or suddenly get so cocky about it, because they are not "the best". They are just better then the mediocore ones.
I would say, at this point, the developers of "The Witcher" are the best for totally renewing the RPG genre and making sure your decisions really do have an impact on the rest of the game.

They didn't answer any question.
But that's not their fault, it's the reporter doing the interview for not asking on and just accepting it when they say they have no answer yet.

At first I was so excited about this game, but the more I read about it, the more sceptic I get.
Everytime a developer starts blabbing that his game will be the best ever, it falls down flat.
For some reason this interview reminded me a lot of "Daikatana" (if someone still remembers that).

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Damn, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Comparing The Old Republic to Daikatana (and by association BioWare to John Romero)? That's pretty harsh. There were a few bits of reassuring knowledge, though yes this was a lot of "We can't answer that yet." That's not the interviewer's fault either, it's just like they explained at the end, they don't want to announce anything until it's absolutely finalized.

i didnt learn anything new, seeing as how every answer was something along the lines of "we cant get into the details of that" or "we cant talk about that yet" or "that will be anounced at a later time"

Please tell me it's not Pay to Play! A good MMORPG shouldn't have to force players to pay for content prebought and loaded taking up space on your computer. Pay-to-play in the Starwars universe should be a system used to gain special items and opportunities. If your rich be a rich character if your poor, like most of America in this Economy, then get those items through hard work and leveling up!

Also don't start out with several calsses, have a class tree. Through learning skills and abilities from other classes you become a more individual and more rounded character.

This is a total waste of time really. I'm not even sure they care about Star Wars Knights Of The Old Republic III. Because it would be nice as hell if they did. Sith Lords is all ready rare on ebay. Its like $40-60 now.

Dude! they used my question about space combat and customized gear!
Although they aren't giving us straight answers, it is reassuring to know that it is probably being worked on. If it wasn't already, they are probably going to reconsider it.

people pay well over 20 a month for f2p games with cash shops and such by a good darn bit.

i like them not talking about things unless they "solid" on them, how many other big title mmos have fallen flat by devs that wrote long lists of features that never saw the light of day because they ran out of money and time to do them? aoc, vanguard, warhammer all had the long hype parade and even if they were decent to good looked that much worse because things were left on the cutting room floor.

would have hoped for a bit more solid info but be happy to wait till they actually have solid info to put out.

Two things I thought these guys said that were interesting. Lemme know what you all think:

1. On page 1, Dallas Dickinson says, "Several of our classes have healing branches that they can follow..." So does this mean that there is a skill-tree based leveling-up system (a la SWG?) versus a "reach-certain-level-and-buy-latest-skill-from-trainer system?"

2. On page 4, Jake Neri makes the comment, "We don't have any specifics on any of the Jedi classes,..." Does this mean that there are multiple different Jedi/Sith classes? Is it similar to KOTOR's Jedi Sentinel/Consular/Guardian system? Are there prestige classes that graduate to Jedi Master/Watchmen/Weapon Master or the Sith side's Assassin/Lord/Maurader?

That's why people hate & love Boot Camp at the same time: they are thankful they can use Windows-only programs but lazy developers use this as an excuse not to develop for Macs at all. This is frustrating, as no one wants to keep a Windows partition just because developers are lazy. Besides, well-written Mac apps are more efficient than Windows programs.

Dude they are a business. Do the math. Mac is only like 8% of the market, how many of those are gamers? Out of those, how many of those gamers aren't using Boot Camp? I'd bet you are looking at a pretty small number. The porting to Mac isn't trivial it's a goodly some of money. That money could be spent towards features that would help them get more sales from the PC market. I'd bet the added sales would be higher from new features, but even if the sales gained from the added features were the same number as the sales lost from not having a Mac version, you wanna not what the difference is? The added features would benefit all of their customers and not a teeny tiny portion of them.

Am I the only one who finds it annoying they have gone for another stylized cartoon type of game? Why provide a CGI movie that looks like an incredible film and then fill the game with kids cartoon style characters?
Last I heard their excuse was that it was because there arent many cartoony style mmos out there. Well there's one on the tip of my tonuge.. hmm begins with a W... you may have heard of it..?

You are underestimating the potential Mac costumers. From the overall market point of view, yes, only 8%. But that includes netbooks, budget PCs of people that don't give a damn for games of any kind and that can't even run TOR. On the $900+ side, Apple has 93% market share. Everyone that buys a $900+ Mac has enough firepower to decently run games like TOR (9400M, 2GB RAM DDR3 and a 2.0GHz 3Mb cache are the base specs), and also enough income to pay for a monthly $20 MMO.
LucasArts is porting THE FORCE UNLEASHED for Mac. And it is a decent game only. From whatever point of view you look, this makes no effin' sense.

This is looking superb and I love BioWare, but maybe I'll turn to Blizzard's upcoming MMO: You may bash WoW in every way you like, but you have to congratulate Blizzard for keeping it interesting enough for casuals (where the real money is, as you would have said). They have built a world so large with such a good art direction that even after five years it looks charming. Every game they made is top-notch and nearly all of them got full Mac ports (I dunno about Warcraft I, but whatever)

keeping the graphics cartoony opens the game to a wider range of pcs, i.e. more potential buyers. unlike AoC which had one of the better current gen engines, lest some zones looked really good in that game, others not so much. but in AoC you needed a fairly beefy rig to get all the eye candy.

still in some of the screens the gfx do not look too bad in this game, not like many mmos are pushing the cutting edge of graphics theses days anyway.

Yeah the lack of Mac support is a little annoying. I understand the reasons on both sides, but what companies fail to realize is that for a windows user they pay for the Game + Subscription Fee. Mac users have to pay for the cost of a Windows OS + the Game + Subscription fee. Apple has a small slice of the computer world, but they have a much larger piece of the Consumer market, which is what most people overlook.

Wow, I was a big fan of this game until these two douches started chatting.

How about not doing Q&A's until your ready to say something about the game; this Q&A read like a congressional hearing on Blackwater USA. I.E. We can't say, don't have details, still in testing, HOWEVER we can confirm the information previously we've released via our website forums.

@burleighcatamount lol what? no, macs dont have a larger slice of anything other than people seeking to use their computer for art stuff because (HINT) thats all theyre good for. The consumer market is made up of 50% PC, 30% MAC, and 20% other, they barely beat out the custom jobs and the computers that are neither PCs nor Macs (like consoles, etc.). They dont make up a larger portion of anything, and theres also the fact that while they are cheaper to build programs for, its much harder, its like they took sony's book of rules with the PS3 to the extreme. I have personal experience working in the field on programs as wide and varied as adobe photoshop and everquest 2, so I really gotta call you on what is clearly nonsense.

@burleighcatamount lol what? no, macs dont have a larger slice of anything other than people seeking to use their computer for art stuff because (HINT) thats all theyre good for. The consumer market is made up of 50% PC, 30% MAC, and 20% other, they barely beat out the custom jobs and the computers that are neither PCs nor Macs (like consoles, etc.). They dont make up a larger portion of anything, and theres also the fact that while they are cheaper to build programs for, its much harder, its like they took sony's book of rules with the PS3 to the extreme. I have personal experience working in the field on programs as wide and varied as adobe photoshop and everquest 2, so I really gotta call you on what is clearly nonsense.

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You just proved my point. They have about 10% of the computer market, and you just stated they hold 30% of the consumer market. That is all I was trying to say lol.

IGN really should have waited until they'd done some work to do this. This is event season so they're not going to be making huge leaps and are therefore largely in a position where they can't reveal anything more. If this had been done in say December, when more work had the time to have been done, then we might have got some new/important info but not now because all the stuff they're done with was announced at E3.

And I am totally hyped up for this. So long as there's no subscription fees because that puts me off an MMO pretty much fully straight away.

subscription fees will only kill the game if it isnt worth it. since there are still 6 figure subscribers to both AoC and War as well as over 400k for ffxi it should show you that people are more than willing to pay for shit, or pay for something really fricken old. there will be a p2p format, whether its subs or MT we dont know. the only real worry is that EA decides to be greedy shitheads and make it a subscription based MT game which is a distinct possibility. if they did that it wouldnt kill the game but significantly hamper its growth and staying power which is why EA will probably do it because they always do whats worst for their games and gamers. having said that, i think bioware will deliver the quality we are used to from them because they are to EA what IW is to activision. they are both highly prestigious and successful giving them the unique position of saying "its our way or the highway and i dont give a damn if your the guy signing my checks" to the guys in charge and get away with it.

to get back on the p2p formats, there have been rumors of both MT and sub based which really doesnt mean anything because most MMOs are both, sub based in the west and MT in the east but i dont think one has come along that used both at the same time in the same region (not at launch anyways). DDO will use both a sub base and F2P MT format starting aug 6 i believe. if its successful enough you may see more of that in the future. this also means jack shit. MT games are only good when they walk the very fine line of what gives value to their products which is near impossible with corporate fatshits running the show. they have the "charge more and charge more often" approach to even the simplest of things in games which drives consumers away and cheapens the experience of the game by forcing the player to constantly ask themselves "is this shit worth it?" which is why MT formats arent the norm here in the west.

a lot of companies are experimenting with the format again because they are having a hard time sustaining subscriptions but that isnt because its too expensive, its because its not a valuable purchase anymore. a lot of recent MMOs are providing less of a gaming experience than games that arent MMOs and are free. if companies start "giving back" to their supporters you'd see higher retention rates instead of the crash and burns we've seen lately, but they just pocket the 15 bucks and give players the ole ..i., which is why MMOs are in a bizarre "growing but shrinking" niche genre. there are more people willing to play them now than ever before but none of them can retain any significant player base.

in summary, if TOR can bring depth back to the genre and the only thing that has any semblance of repetition is the amount of combat (meaning, killing lots of shit which is repetitive in every game but that doesnt mean its not fun) but not devalue it by gouging customers it will be a huge success. if not, it could kill MMOs

Wow...this Q&A is a complete waste of time. "Umm...we can't answer anything so we'll give cryptic responses that reveal nothing." Why the bloody hell did I read this? Oh yeah, thought it was a Q&A, not a Q&Avoid!

That's funny. Last I checked, this game WAS an MMO. Stop *****ing because you can't afford $15 to pay for a game every month.

Development for this game has been super-extensive. They've loaded enough content in this game to equate to 3-6 KOTOR sequels. I can't begin to fathom the ignorance of some of the people who comment on this article.

Then again, this is ign.com, home of the ignorant masses. I shouldn't expect anything less.

Holy fuck @BrendanCheuvront,
You're a fucking retard, it's an MMO not KOTor for christ's sake... Do the world a favor and kill yourself now lol. MMOs you have to pay for, the good/successful MMOs anyways (As f2p MMOs are full of failure, all except Guild Wars of course which supported itself/content expansion by adding paid expansions to the game.)..

Also, this has got to be the blandest and worse Q&A I've ever seen. Besides the terrible Q&A and the lack of Answers I also have to say that sacrificing your graphics to make the MMO appealing to people that are running on specs from over 8-10 years ago will detract alot of potential customers from your game. As of right now your game looks like complete shit, worse than old DAOC and Ultima Online Graphics (Both games were good and original innovators of the MMO industry.), games that are 9+ years old sadly. Making your game look like shit with cartoony graphics just like WoW (One of the many reasons I could not fucking stand WoW.), will turn off alot of potential customers. Graphics like that are only acceptable in old respectable game likes UO, DAOC, Shadowbane, etc., not in a fucking MMO that is set o be released sometime in the year 2010+.

I've read over at the forums, and here is what Bioware is doing. They already have a full game now being tested. They already have servers. And most importantly, they make sure that everything they say will be in the game already works, and they are 100% sure that it will be shipped in the final package. They want to make sure that they don't give out false promises like many other MMO's have done in the past.

For example, what if they said space combat will be in the game and will be awesome you get to do this there will be this etc. but they run out of money and can't do anything? That would be bad for the game.

I will agree they could have given out a little more information, but considering the fact that this game was relatively just announced, I'll give it time. It took WoW three years for example after it was announced.

And to all the people who don't it to be subscription, its 15 bucks a month at most. Most people make that in an hour. Mow some lawns or something if you're really desperate. How do you expect a game to come up with new content and to have patches if they can't get any income. If not for subscription, WoW would barely be able to have one patch an expansion.

Also, the game is set to be able to play on low quality computers, so people who complain that they have bad computers, lighten up.

The reason the graphics are bad is because its probably barely in the alpha. Have you seen alpha graphics for other games? They're terrible. Most companies make sure the programming works fine and makes sure the models do what they're supposed to before they add more textures and fine tune the graphics.

Why is Bioware trying to make a mistake? Is this the "South Park" of computer gaming?

Already Bioware has cast aside a sensible approach. While they do not announce having lost the commercial license to make D&D style game-play, they won't have attributes, skills, and feats like prior Old Republic games. This is a big let down for RPG fans. No RPG in the RPG. It's just "companions and powers" in an MMO FPS.

Secondly, Bioware has screwed up an MMO by using voice acting for companion classes. This means the stories will be redundant. Even if there are thousands of characters, it's better to have a wide ability to have ones own story, to play a new story in the game, rather than to play through the same old story.

Of course this game is made by Bioware Austin, not Bioware in Canada. Let's hope the recession kills the Austin house!

This is a mmo...its not NWN or baldurs gate, if you want a D&D style game play Dragon Age Origins, I did, and it was awesome. But Mass Effect 1 and 2 were also awesome, so was Age of Conan...until funcom screwed it up, anyways. This is a Bioware game, story, customization, companion characters, action oriented combat, I would kill to play this game right now. Wait, nevermind that is illegal, I would...I would sell both my legs to play this game. Actually I think thats illegal too : / Well anyways, you get my point!

I do not see why people wish a substandard game -- a game that admittedly is more MMO-FPS rather than an MMO-RPG. If Bioware was going to market the game as an MMO-FPS, I'd expect the game they described. However, the game is labelled "Old Republic" and is called an MMO-RPG, which brings to mind Bioware's prior CRPG products.

An MMO-RPG doesn't need to suck mud. It can be superior to a CRPG while even gaining greater elements of customization and individuality of characters. The problem with Bioware's presently expressed model of "Star Wars: the Old Republic" is that it discards individuality to a large extent. A unique character is not possible with what they've described so far. And I do not want to play a Star Wars MMO-RPG where the only variety is in character model.

I know the reason that Bioware hasn't used the prior game structure with D&D style attributes. They no longer have legal right to use D&D game rule systems nor does the company that granted them the right have the ability to use or grant Star Wars titles. Namely, Wizards (once Wizards of the Coast) has discontinued their Star Wars games. Bioware won't be using Wizards' proprietary Star Wars RPG rules because Wizards can't give it out.

Bioware could use the Dragon Age Origins game system, but I think the rules for it have been garnered from an unannounced game system (or are similar enough to evoke a lawsuit). Of course, a similar system to that of DAO could be worked into Bioware's upcoming Star Wars MMORPG. In my opinion, should Bioware actually own the rights to that game system used in DAO, a similar structure should be used in Star Wars Old Republic. I do opine that the eventual system should have hundreds of skills and talents however. I also opine that the eventual system should make use of a diplomatic "crafting" game, randomized planets and randomized companions. To hell with prefabricated companion stories, I think we'd prefer a system by which we can slowly define our own companion stories out of potential "cards".